For whom the feeling tolls

From a simple series of drawings to sophisticated and precise motion of objects following physics laws, animation has come a long way in just a few decades. Companies like Pixar have raised the bar with every movie release. Eventually all animations look sophisticated, beautiful and stunning, yet they fail to hold us unless there is a compelling story. Illustration is for the mind. Story is for generations. This is a key point for creating good slides/presentations - it is good to have appropriate visuals, but you need to have a compelling story.

In the Inside Out movie, the story of a girl depicted through personifaction of emotions is a brilliant way to capture the psychology of a child. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that 'depression emotion' is going to have some kind of impact, but the script manages it very well until the end. The fact that depression is an important emotion for human beings (perhaps animals too) is a neat little knot. But after watching the movie, I felt something was eluding me and I wasn't able to quite capture it. I have heard a similar story-line before? But where?

Many people read the bhagavad-gita in original, translated or original with translations and are awed by its philosophy. Lectures after lectures have eloquently captured its essence expounded through a variety of experiences. Its so easy to quote 'karmaNi eva adhikAraH te', 'yogaH karmasu kausalam', yet it is near impossible to put them in practice. Or get a thrill reminiscing Robert Oppenheimer quoting the destruction verse (divisUrya sahasrasya) during the nuclear bomb.

Whenever I get hold of a book, I tend to read the Introduction/Foreward section fully. Understanding why the author write the book, provides a context for the content. In that sense, one of the most brilliant and under-rated chapters is the first chapter of the gIta. In fact both rAmAyaNa and mahAbhArata are fantastic human psychology guides. Many characters of these two epics are diluted in our day-to-day versions and are put in black-white, so the real shades don't come out as vyAsa had put it. I feel sorry for psychology students who quote Jung and Freud at the drop of a hat, yet cannot explain the confusions of yudhiShThira or the anxiety of dasharatha.

From author's view, follow how the context is being brilliantly set. If the content was important, he could have directly skipped to the preaching section. Yet vyAsa devotes an entire chapter to set the mood. In the first chapter "arjuna vishAda yoga", there is a brilliant contrast of two feelings: duryodhana's and arjuna's. Both are driven by ego and are ready to annhiliate the other side. Duryodhana cautions droNa of his nemesis, followed by provoking that he is not a kShatriya (implying not fit for a battle) and then implying a soft corner for his favorite student. He has more strength in numbers than the pANdava-s, yet is doubtful of victory. And arjuna begins with ordering krishNa to take 'his' chariot in front of the army and proclaims that he is ready to take them on.

At no point duryodhana exibhits a feeling of remorse that what he is doing is wrong. Though enveloped in doubt, there is no sadness in him on what happens to anyone as he clearly declares that others are willing to die for him. In complete contrast, arjuna after being cleverly put between bhIShma and droNa, breaks down because of 'depression'. (A trivia: Many think that the first words spoken by kRShNa are in the 2nd chapter. But here kRShNa says, "Arjuna, see the assembled Kurus"). This vishAda is the reason arjuna is ready to lay down his life in the battle-field and hoping he would get mokSha without any incurred pApa or effort.

Just as in Riley's triggering of her fondest memories, 'depression' played a key role for arjuna to bring out the best in him. Without 'depression' we would all be like duryodhana, not even feeling what is wrong.

For the Samskritam lovers, the verbs used in arjuna's lamentation are like leaving a kid in candy shop. The dhAtu of many words are deep in meaning that translating them does not do justice. (kRupayA parayA AviShTaH, sIdanti gAtrANi, mukham pariSuShyati, gANDIvam sravate, tvak paridahyate, sreyaH na anupaSyAmi).

I've heard people give various reasons to learn (or not to learn) Samskritam. From a cliched 'I read in 5th grade' to a proud 'My grandfather knows it' to 'I simply don't have time' to 'Its complicated'. A few among them stay on to continue to learn the language, in addition to just admiring. For them, the depression has already set in.

When is yours ?

(Some ideas inspired by Sri Dr. Padmakumar's bhagavad-gIta series on youtube).

Wisdom by numbers

In the late 1980's there was a superhit Hindi song with simple lyrics and catchy tunes. It become very popular even in the anti-Hindi belts of India and catapulted Madhuri Dixit to instant fame. Yeah, for those from that era, I dont have to give a clue anymore. So it goes ek, do, teen ... barah, terah - counting from 1 to 13, the lyric pauses to make a pun-ny link between terah (13) and tera (you) - tera karoon intazaar (im waiting for you, come out, the Spring has arrived). Language of lyrics and tunes are made for each other, I guess. Setting that tune to translated lyrics just doesn't feel quite right. It goes on to describe other numbers and events, but frankly who remembers the rest of the lyrics?

But long before Madhuri danced to the tunes of counting 1,2,3 to wait for her boyfriend, this technique was used to put a distressed King to bed. Not by counting sheeps, but by shedding an enormous amount of wisdom on observations of human behavior. Set in a form of dialog, the context of it is as fascinating as the content. Sanjaya has just returned from a mission to pANdava-s to "accept terms" of duryodhana, but dhRtarAShtra does not know about the result yet. The King asks Sanjaya to spell out, but Sanjaya says, its late in the night and he would disclose the details only in the court in front of everyone, the next day morning. This makes the king uncomfortable and cannot sleep at night. And so when the king is in distress, he promptly calls for his brother for advice. And thus the chapter is named "Unable to sleep at night chapter (prajAgara parva - part of udyoga parva)" - more popularly known by its content - vidura nIti (Laws/Sayings of vidura). Yes, we are talking about Vidura, yet another fascinating character of the epic. Etymologically viduraH could be vigrahavAkya-ed in two ways - vidyAyAm rate iti viduraH - (one who revels in knowledge is vidura) or vidyA rate yasmin saH viduraH (one, in whom knowledge shines, is vidura). The whole vidura nIti is a dialog between completely distressed dhRtarAShTra and the wise Vidura, that goes on for the whole night.

Unlike the pancatantra or hitopadeSa, where a story ends with one profound subhAShita that serves as a morale summary, the whole vidura nIti is chock full of quotes, sayings, proverbs and subhAShita-s, that would make any quoter look like an "Instant Jnani".  Its literally an encyclopedia of taxonomy of human behavior, a critique of human tendencies and a book of law for a ruler and advice to common man. Many popular quotes are from this chapter -

"ekaH svAdu na bhunjIta" - do not eat alone (always share food with others)
"satyam svargasya sopAnam" - truth is the step to svargaH
"kshamA guNo hi aSaktAnAm, SaktAnAm bhUShaNam" - Forgiveness is a virtue for weak, and an ornament for brave.
"mUrkheShu paNditAH jIvanti" - Because fools are around, wise are recognized (lit. wise survive in fools, ie in foolishness of other people)

and many many more. The last one, especially can be related easily in IT project environments. If you got a performance reward, its not because you worked hard, but others around you worked less harder than you! In some sloka-s, vidura's perspective and straight-forwardness is stunning.

But there is always one thing most profound than others. In the first section of the dialog Vidura explains the dos and donts of a king just using numbers. Vidura delivers a summary of his advice to the king in a single quote.

ekayA dve viniScitya trImScaturbhiH vaSe kuru |
panca jitvA viditvA ShaT sapta hitvA sukhI bhava ||

By 1 determine (discriminate/divide) 2, using 4 overpower 3, conquer 5, know 6, shed 7 ane be happy.

If we take liberty to write this down mathematically, here is the formula for happiness:

happiness = 1/2 + 3^4 * 5 + 6 - 7.

The rounded answer seems to be 404 (as you type in a calculator), and Im pretty sure Vidura secretly encoded that happiness is not to be found without these - astonishingly predating the Http API.

Ok just kidding. Philosophically, this is explained as - Using 1 intellect (ekayA buddhyA), determine 2 - whats right and whats wrong. Using the 4 sAma, dAna, bheda, danda technique subdue the 3 types of people - friends, enemies and the confused. Conquer 5 indriyAs (senses of perception), know 6 (adhibhUta [material science], adhyAtma [spiritual science], adhidaiva [science of natural forces], adhiyajna [inquisition about one fundamental kartA], sarvagata [omnipresence of the kartA] and karma [that kartA is the real doer of everything]) and shed the 7 vices (striyA, mRgayA, pAnam, vAkpAruSham, mahat-daNda-pAruSham, artha-dUShaNam: respectively - indulgence in amorous activities, hunting, addictions like alcohol, harsh speech, excessive punishment, misusing wealth).

Then he goes after each number upto 10 and classifying various laws, rules, systems and observations by numbers. There may be some observations that are not relatable to modern society, but in many cases he seems to be spot on. The taxonomy of Vidura reflects a very deep knowledge of things around him. A deeper inference from this - to make such a classification, the person should not only know the properties of the subject, but also know what NOT belongs to that classification and why. To say that there are three primary colors (RGB model) takes observation. But to say only 3 colors are required, not more not less, requires deeper understanding of the nature of colors.

And finally, a word about the Samskritam behind it. Just like yakSha praSna is a great material on gender of nouns, vidura nIti is a fantastic source of using linga-s for cardinals. The slight variations of cardinals in Samskritam may distract a beginner learner (dve, dvau, trayaH, tisraH, catvAri, catasraH etc.) but these sloka-s will help to understand them with context.

The cost of price

Yet another Thanksgiving Day and a mad rush to get the best deals went by. In thee recent years, Black Friday has started arriving a few Mondays earlier, and if we apply mathematical induction, in a few years Black Friday deals may start by New Year. The tradition of having a nice family dinner and rushing off to retail stores at 12 mid night with friends and cousins may vanish soon. I hope such moments will make a great adventure story for our grandkids, er... only if they will ever sit down to listen to us, instead of playing PS10.

One of the things that surprised me in Russia (Soviet Union) was the "Price of Things". Obviously, consumerism hadn't gotten there yet (before 1991), so the prices were always fixed by the government. For any produce you pick up from store, there were only three price ranges - 1) moscow region 2) siberia region 3) vladivostok region. And each was about 10 kopeks (think 10 cents) dearer, to cover the transport cost! That's it! Any city I go, any shop I go, whether its Moskva, Kiev or Minsk, the price of kilo of butter, a litre of milk or loaf of bread is same price. With inflation hardly a notion under socialism, the prices remained stable for a long time. And with government controlling produces, there were not 10 brands of milk, 6 gradation of fat %, with or without lactose, with or without Vitamin D, with or without DHA, organic and non-organic, quality of grass and food consumed by the cows, amount of hormones injected, pasteurized or homogenized, and a stamp of shelf life of 10 days for milk! And there were just two varities of bread (white and black - if you are curious).

And guess what? When friends and relatives gathered around for weekends or holidays they did not talk about varieties of milk or whether the basic human consumable food like bread has any harmful ingredients like HFCS or who gives the best deal. No one regretted paying more for something and go back to stand in line to return it only to spend more money on something else than what they originally spent. Many conversations were around literature, music, culture, science, math and of course vodka.

Constrast this in US (for sake of this comparison) many conversations are invariably intruded with some sort of "where what is on sale, now?". Pretty much every information media is always providing some kind of deal - email, mail ads, billboards, store coupons, online coupons, bulk coupons and so on. In general, the common public seem to spend more time trying to "get a better deal" out of anything. Imagine a person spends about 15 minutes on average a day (including spending time to return, talk to customer service etc.) to find a deal. Assume that about 100m buy stuff every day after comparing prices from various online stores, deal sites and retail outlets. So conservatively about 100 million x 15 minutes of time is "non-productive" every single day in US. All this is inessential non-productivity.

(Note: I'm not against choice, choice is needed for creativity. Just saying that that major part of our life could be productively spent elsewhere).

How does this all relate to Sanskrit? I am currently teaching Sanskrit to children (of ages 5 to 15) and I am realizing that the lack of phonetic knowledge is causing them a great difficulty. I then started looking into how the English language is being taught and it was very intriguing to see the amount of time and effort put into "giving a phonetic twist" to a script in which phonetics simply does not exist. As a child, I somehow learnt English as a foreign language, but I dont remember how I learnt it. Now when I try to feel how English is taught, I realize it must be one of the hardest things to do. I watched a kid trying to learn different pronunciations of letter "A" for about two weeks. She was very confused with the sound 'A' and how it ends up differently in bat, boat, far, near, that and so on. Nearly every other new word contained an exception to how a previous word was learnt. God forbid when it comes to consonants - who knows when what is silent - the point is there is no logical relation between the letters, script and the language. Children are merely forced into a prevailing structure, with every institution claiming their method is better than another. A whole industry of private schools, expensive curriculums, tutorial institutions, spelling-bee competitions and reading programs thrive just to "fill in the gap" of something fundamentally missing in the English script/language. Children at their early ages (1-5) are in the absolute prime time of absorbing languages. And guess what? Most of their prime time is lost in inessential non-productivity.

Constrast this with a fully phonetic language like Sanskritam, which has a very strong "shIkShA-shAstra" (phonetic-science). There is a clear separation of vowels and consonants, a clear notion of what parts of mouth is used to pronounce a sound, and what the amount of stress of each sound requires. There are even more attributes, but this suffices to make the point. The day a child learns the "sounds", she is productive immediately with the words. The real challenge for the kids then is to find relationships between words within compound-words (samAsa) or in a sentence and that builds a strong analytical skill. This, at least should be one of the reasons why Sanskritam should be taught at a very early age.

(Note: I am not saying English shouldn't be learnt or taught. Just saying that there is a major part of brain that gets exercised better when learning Sanskritam at an early age).

It may be sometimes like this

हिम ऋतुः आयमानः अस्ति । अस्मिन् नगरे तु सर्वदा मेघावृतः । पौलेन उक्तम् आसीत् ७ वादने एव अत्र भवति इति । सद्यः १५ निमेषात् अनन्तरम् अपि सः न आगतः । कुतोऽयम् विलम्बः । इतोपि किञ्चित् प्रतीक्षाम् करोमि । आगच्छति चेत् वरं नोचेत् अहमेव विद्यालयं गच्छामि । प्रातःकाले सुहृद्भिः विद्यालयं गन्तुम् मार्गकोणे प्रतिक्ष्यमाने मम चिन्तनयानम् निरोद्धुम् स्कन्धे लघूष्णहस्तम् स्पृष्टम् । प्रतिक्रम्य तत्र जार्जम् दृष्टवान् । ’जार्ज! नमस्कारः । आगतवान् वा ! समयः एव ।’

जार्जः मौनेन मां दृष्ट्वा नेत्रोन्मीलनं कृतवान् । सः अधिकतया न वदति । परन्तु सुहृदाम् मनश्चालनम् सम्यक् अवगन्तुम् समर्थः । योगाभ्यासम् वा ध्यानम् वा किमपि करोति । प्रायः तस्मात् बलम् । तदा एव ’सुहृदो’ इत्युक्तं शब्दं श्रुत्वा एव अवगतवन्तौ पौलः आगतः इति । यतोऽपि तस्य विलम्बनम् मह्यम् न रोचते, तस्य ध्वनिः मधुरा अस्ति । प्रसिद्धः गायकः भविष्यति सः इति मम न संशयः ।

’अस्तु तर्हि । गच्छामः । अद्यतन पठनं सुन्दरं स्यात् । महकवेः अनुसन्धानम् करोति इत्युक्तवान् आस्सीत् आचार्यः ।’

’अस्तु । गच्छामः’ । तावप्युक्तवन्तौ ।

किमपि परस्परमनुक्त्वा किञ्चित् दुरम् चलितवन्तः वयम् । पौलः एव प्रथमं पृष्टवान् ’अद्य प्रात:काले गणितम् खलु?’ । ’आआम्म्म्म्’ इति अति मन्द-स्वरेन किमपि विचिन्तयन्निव जार्जः प्रत्यवदत् । ’मह्यम् तादृशम् गणितम् न रोचते यादृशम् भाषाज्ञानम्’ इति पौलः अवदत् । ’न केवलम् भवते, मह्यम् अपि’ इत्यहमपि समावदत् । ’अद्य ब्रह्मगुप्तस्य चक्रवालम् पाठयति । किमपि न अवगतम् मया गत वर्गे । चक्रवालम् व विचक्रवालम् वा कस्य को लाभः । किमपि भवेत् ।’ इति किञ्चित् उच्चस्थाय्याम् एव अवदम् । अग्रे वयम् मौनेन गत्वा विद्यालयम् प्राप्तवन्तः ।

’आर्यभट्ट-भवनम्’ आगतम् । अत्रैव हि गणितवर्गप्रकोष्टः । आचार्यः पाठम् आरब्धवान् । मम मनः तत्र नासीत् । यथेष्टम् नवोड्डयनकौशल्यः प्राप्तः विहङ्गरिव उड्डयनम् कृतः । न केवलम् आकशे अपि काले च । Keats वर्येन सह प्रातराशः । माध्याह्ने Wordsworth-कविना सह भोजनम् । रात्रौ तथा हि बृहत् कविसम्मेलने मधुरकाव्यपानम् ।

घण्टानादे गणितवर्गः समाप्तः । शीघ्रमेव समयः यापितः । उत्तममेव । यथापूर्वम् किमपि न अवगतम् । त्रयः वयम् मिलित्वा यास्क-नाम्ना भाषाभवनम् प्रति गतन्वन्तः । तत्र दूरम् गच्छन्तम् अन्यतमम् छात्रम् दृष्ट्वा जार्जः माम् सूचितवान् ’नूतनः सः । नाम तस्य रिच्’ ।

’एवम् वा । उत्तमम्’ । कदाचित् नाम श्रुत्वैव केषाञ्चित् जनानाम् आत्मसम्बन्धः निर्दिश्यते स्यात् । सः अपि तत्रैव गच्छन्नस्ति यत्र वयम् । अस्तु अनन्तरम् तेन परिचयम् करोमि इति चिन्तयित्वा प्रकोष्टम् मित्रैः सह प्रविष्टवान् ।

अस्माकम् आचार्यः अशिथिल: इति अन्ये छात्राः वदन्ति । तन्न मम मते । मह्यम् तु सः कारुण्यः इव भाति । तस्य भाषाज्ञानम् दृष्ट्वा अनेकवारम् विस्मितो आसमहम् । सर्वेषाम् आचर्याणाम् प्रियतमः सः शिष्यः यः विषये स्वाभाविकज्ञानम् च आसक्तिम् प्रदर्शयति खलु । द्रोणार्जुन न्याय्यरिव ।

Good morning, sir |

Good morning |

आचार्यः अपि कुतूहलेन प्रणम्यत् । ’उपविशन्ताम् ।’ एतस्य वर्गे मया तु सर्वदा प्रथमे मञ्चे एव उपवेष्टव्यः ।

’अस्तु । अद्य किञ्चित् सिंहावलोकनम् कुर्मः । विभक्त्यः स्मर्यन्ते वा?’

इतस्ततः लघुशब्दम् श्रुतम् । न कुत्रचित् उत्सुकम् । तृतीये मञ्चे उपविष्टम् जेम्सम् दृष्ट्वा आचार्यः पृष्टवान् ।

'He' इत्यस्य पदस्य सप्त-विभक्तिम् उभयोर्वचनयोः प्रदर्शयतु कृपया ।


He, They
Him, Them
By Him, By Them
.....


मौनम् । अनिर्वृतम् मौनम् वर्गे । 'Pin-drop silence' इति न्याय्यम् भवन्तः श्रुतवन्तः खलु । तथैव । मम मनसि क्षणे एव अनेके विषयाः विचाराः विमानम् इव प्रचलन्तः आसन् । विभक्त्यः । अहो सुन्दरम् सरलम् च । भाषाज्ञानस्य मूलभूतमेतदेव ननु । तदज्ञात्वा कथम् उत्तीर्णम् प्राप्स्यन्ति एते बालाः । अस्माकम् पूर्वजानां भाषां ज्ञातव्यम् इति लवनमात्रमपि अभिरुचिः नास्ति एतेषाम् ।

आचार्यः माम् प्रति वीक्षितवान् । भवान् जानात्येव, प्रतनोतु इति संज्ञया आदेशितवान् । अहम् बहु उत्सुकेन उत्थाय


to him/for him, to them/for them
Of him, of them
In him, in them

इति संपूरितवान् । अपि सर्वान् छात्रान् एक वारम् चक्षुषौ सारयितवान् ।

’धन्यवादाः । उपविश्येताम् । पश्यन्ताम् छात्राः । इयं भाषा सुलभम् अस्ति ननु । पद द्वयम् एव - Him/Them. केवलम् उपसर्गान् प्रयुजुय वाक्यार्थाः निर्णेयिताः । अपि च वचनद्वयम् एव - एकम् च बहु वचनम् च’ । अत्र कः क्लेशः ।’

पाठः अग्रे गतः । कुतुहलेन श्रुतः मया । यदा यदा Keats अथवा Wordsworth प्रति आचार्यः वदति, अहम् पौलं प्रति पश्यामि । तस्य मुखेऽपि प्रसन्नता दृश्यते ।

वर्गे समाप्ते, सर्वे गतवन्तः । मम एकः प्रश्नः स्फुरितः, पुनः आचार्यम् प्रति गच्छामि स्म । तस्मिन्नेव समये तत्र अन्यः आचार्यः आगतवान् । अतः तयोः सम्भाषणं श्रोतुम् अवकाशः अभवत् । आद्यौ तयोः सम्भाषणम् सम्यक् न श्रुतम् । किञ्चित् तीक्ष्न-कर्णाभ्यां श्रोतुम् यतितवान् ।

’आम् भॊः’ इति मम आचार्यः अवदत् । ’उदर निमित्तमेव जीवनम् । किं करवाणि । मनः तु षेक्स्पियर् वाञ्छति । मुखेन कालिदसस्य प्रशंसाः । भाषाम् तु पाठयामि । परन्तु छात्राणाम् आसक्तिः न अस्ति । तेषाम् अङ्कान्यैव लक्ष्याणि । विभक्तिम् पाठयामि । व्याकरणम् पाठयामि । परन्तु "What is your name?" इति पृष्टे प्रत्युत्तरम् दातुम् अपि असमर्थः आधुनिकाः बाला: ।’ इत्युक्त्व किञ्चित् मौनम् साधितवान् । पुनः ’अस्माकम् आधुनिक स्थित्याः कारणम् भारतम् एव । तैः अस्माकम् भाषाक्षीणम् अभवत् । तैः महती हानिः कृता । अयर्देशः हस्तात् गतः । स्काट्-देशः अपि गतः । अखण्ड-आङ्ग्ल-साम्राज्यस्य लक्ष्यम् अधो पतितम् । धिक् भारतानाम् ।’

अन्यः आचार्यः अपि किञ्चित् मौनेन स्थित्वा तदनन्तरम् अङ्गीकृतवान् । ’सत्यम् उक्तम् विन्स्टन्-वर्य । परन्तु अयम् शापः स्यात् । इदानीम् छात्राः षेक्स्पियर् न इच्छन्ति । कालिदासम् वा भारविम् वा पठितुम् इच्छन्ति । इदानीं तु किञ्चित् वा पठन्ति । भविष्ये तदपि न बोधितुम् अवकाशः अस्माभिः न लभ्यते । एतैरेव सन्तुष्यामः ।’

’कथं भॊः । कथं सन्तुष्यामहे ।’ इति दु:खेन समावृतम् वाक्यमेव मया अन्त्या श्रुतम् । व्याकुलितोऽहम् आचार्यं पृष्टव्यम् प्रश्नम् विस्मृत्य गृहमागतवान् । वेगेन आगत्य मातरमपि अनवद्य मम प्रकोष्टद्वारम् पिधानम् कृत्वा किञ्चित् कालम् मौनेन भित्तिकं उपरि गभीरतया स्थास्यमानम् षेक्स्पियर्वर्यस्य चित्रं द्ष्टवान् । ’इयम् मम प्रतिज्ञा अस्ति । न केवलम् व्याकरणम् परन्तु भाषायाः सर्वज्ञानम् प्राप्य जनाकर्षनोन्मत्थनकविताः रचयित्वा आग्ङ्ल-भाषायाः महोन्नतम् प्रापयिष्यामि । कदाचित् एवमपि स्यात् ।’

१९४८-तमे भारतात् स्वातन्त्र्यम् प्राप्य वर्षैके समाप्ते ।
- जान्

The News Cook

One main hindrance for students of Samskritam is the "gender" of the word. Is it "aascharyam" or "aascharyaH"? Is it "pAtram" or "pAtraH"? The main problem is only with akaArAnta puMlinga and napumsakalinga. The strIlinga and non-akAranta can usually guessed with our background knowledge of our mother tongues. The problem happens since our Samskritam learning is based on knowledge apriori. It used to be the practice to learn the nAmalinga-anushAsana, ie the amarakosha - the thesaurus of Samskritam words committed to memory before learning much of grammar. The amarakosha pretty much provides a guidance on gender of words, which becomes easier to grasp later on. We do not learn amarakosha now, instead we straight-way try to reason out why a word is in what gender. Add to this our knowlege of other Indian languages, where the words may have morphed. For example, kriShNaH, yogaH - all have become almost feminine-like AkArAnta in Tamil (kriShnA, yogA) or in Hindi, where the akArAnta has disappeared. The improper learning technique yields to misunderstanding the language for its difficulty.

No matter how much comfort you get buying books online and reading reviews, there is nothing like visiting the local brick and mortar bookshop, drinking coffee and reading some books, which you might never want to buy. The world history or reference books come under this category for me. Reading through the history books, we repeatedly come across the term "dark ages". But it was only Europe, unlike Southeast Asia, who was in dark ages for about 12 centuries. She started tasting intellectualness around 15th century and the period after that produced several European philosophers - Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Hegel, Voltaire, Nietzche, Kant, Schopenhauer - each describing their world view with their own new found logic. A few agreed with each other, but many mostly disagreed. Many philosophic context words were invented or redefined, almost a new vocabulary was required by the end of it all. But nobody was as direct as Schopenhauer put it. Kant, despite his brilliant work, beat around the bush a lot, what could have been said in a few words. Unlike Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer in his "World as will and representation" starts off with a sutram-like definition - "The world is my view". He goes on to declare in his introduction that if the reader is not acquainted with Vedanta, he/she would hardly understand his own work. After many definitions and redefinitions of logic, it is interesting to observe that logic is, in fact, illogical.

That's how yudhiShTra responds to a question by yakSha, in the world's first Jeopardy! The yakSha prashna episode is a collection of questions where the gender of a word can be quickly glanced upon. While the questions are simple, the answers are quite extra-ordinary. Just like the modern Jeopardy, yakSha hurls questions from an extremely wide range of categories - physics, cosmology, material sciences, spirituality, dharma, psychology, behaviour, sobriquets, abstracts, concepts, geography and what not! yudhiShTra's responses are equally varying and astonishing: material things are compared against concepts, hypothetical questions are answered with technical acumen, abstract questions are put into context with solid references. It is impossible for a non-advanced civilization to come up with answers like "Mother is heavier than Earth" or "Dharma protects the one who protects it". Many answers seem anti-modern-science in a casual reading, but a thorough understanding of words, etymology and context are necessary to correctly interpret them.

Towards the end yakSha asks two very simple questions. yudhiShTra's responses to these stretches the mind beyond imagination, takes it to exosphere and suddenly drops off like a hot potato in astonishment and disbelief, only not to parachute-land but crash back into senses. You kind of get the feeling of a jolt at halting suddenly after a wild thrill ride.

कः पन्थाः ? asks yakSha. "What is the road?" I would have just asked back "To where?".

तर्क: अप्रतिष्ट: श्रुतयो विभिन्ना: न एको ऋषि: यस्य मतम् प्रमाणम् ।
धर्मस्य तत्त्वं निहितम् गुहायाम् महाजनो येन गतः स पन्थाः ॥

Yudhishtra's first utterance is "tarkaH apratiShTaH". A quote on which vyAkhyAna can be done for hours I guess. "Logic is baseless". Logic has been the considered the greatest employment of human intellect since Aristotle, Plato down to the European philosophers, who have spent their lifetime only in logic. But Yudhishtra dismisses it curtly - Logic is limited, baseless and cannot be relied upon.

"srutayo vibhinnAH" - vedA-s say different things! "na eko rShiH yasya matam pramANam" - There is not a single rishi whose word is an authority! Its just a poetic way of expressing that vedA-s are interpreted differently and every rishi worth his beard has an opinion. "dharmasya tattvam nihitam guhAyAm". The truth about dharma is hidden in a deep cave! What the Huh? Where did dharma come from? What does it have to do with logic or vedas or roads? Each rishi is attempting to explain what is "dharma", but nobody has a single opinion about it and nobody really knows what dharma is. And then he finally ties them all beautifully - "mahAjano yena gataH saH panThaH" - the road travelled by great people is the one to follow (for mokSha)! The great ones have already figured it out, you just follow the road paved by them. yakSha was not even asking about a physical road! That is the fault of translation or misunderstanding of contexts. Even in English we use the term "Road to the future" or "Path to the future", but that is not what striked us first!

Then comes a final punch, a seemingly innocuous question, the one that we ask everyday and get mind numbing answers from TV, media, google, facebook and so many leaking outlets of information bombarding us from all around. Ironically, thats the last question yakSha asks -  का वार्ता ? - "What is the news?"

And next time when you turn on the Weather channel, remember yudhiShTra's answer, it will make you cringe like an invisible spec of dust in a massive tornado:

अस्मिन् महामोहमये कटाहे सूर्याग्निना रात्रिदिव इन्धनेन ।
मास ऋतु दर्वी परिघट्टनेन भूतानि काल: पचति इति वार्ता ॥

asmin mahaa-moha-maye kaTaahe - In the frying pan of ignorance of this world, using the Sun as fire (sUrya agninA), day and night as fuels (ratri diva indhanena - the word "Indane" - the Indian lpg/oil/gas company comes from the word indhana "fuel"), with seasons as the ladle (mAsa-rtu-darvI-parighattanena), kAlaH (the time), pacati (cooks) bhuTAni - the living beings.

Yes. Time puts us all in ignorance-coated non-stick tawa and keeps cooking us like papad - when done, takes us and tosses aside, puts the new papad in.

This is the news.

Strike three and you are in

One of the most difficult performances of Tom Hanks must have been the movie Cast Away. Imagine a lush island, turquoise sea, heavenly beach, fine sand, a noisy crew and good food all around you. And yet he has to act like a lonely man for the best part of 2 hours of the movie. The movie was pretty boring, except for one poignant scene, where the protagonist after returning back to civilization, looks unbelievably at a lighter. Hanks' expressions in that scene are brilliant yet subdued. (I wonder what Shivaji Ganesan would have done in that scene). Anyway, in the island, he discovered "fire" on his own after several attempts and kept the fire going. But here, a simple lighter did the job.

Have you paused to think when you tried to strike a light with a match-stick a few times, but it does not light up? You know it will. There is no loss of heart, frustration or despondency when a simple match stick does not light up the first few times. But then, you re-adjust the match box, the stick, your fingers gripping slightly a bit tighter, your mind focusing on it a little  more intently, strike hard once more, only this time, the stick lights up.

When the Yamunotrii 2013 campaign was going on, several people subtly wondered the need for a residential camp, when the regular classes and weekend workshops are happening, which gives a better time management than a "whole weekend" camp. When the registrations only trickled, at one point of time even I was questioning myself the need for a residential camp. Are we thrusting an event into minds of people? Is there a false sense of achievement of learning Samskritam over a weekend? Can Samskritam be appreciated in one day, which has enough literature for a jIva to go through in multiple janma-s? Is Samskritam really important for a jIva, whose ultimate sAdhanA is mokSha? Can the flip of the switch happen just like that?

The last question is the easiest to answer. We have heard from the biographies of great achievers that that flip of the switch or what I call the strike of the match does happen. For some like Pattinathar, Purandhara Dasa, Tulasidas, Ramana Maharishi such a strike happened in a single moment. But for some, like Swami Vivekananda, whose 150th birth anniversary is being celebrated this year, the light happened after a few strikes.

For the rest of the questions, I searched for the answers in the camp itself. The camp is not exactly about learning Samskritam. It is not possible to learn a language in one weekend. It is about an immersive experience, that people all around you are talking, thinking and arguing about Samskritam. I have been to several technical conferences, but almost always have come back with none wiser than before. May be a few contacts, a few made in China gifts and a good amount of advertisers spamming my email after the event. But conferences are really about an experience of being there and hearing and listening only about the subject matter all the time. We often use the word "mandiram" for temple. I like the word "aalayam" better, because the word implies the "coming together of all minds". The similarity in thought all around you makes the neurons spike the voltages more frequent to excite that first strike.

Learning Samskritam is just like learning any other subject. Books can provide information, but they cannot explain the abstractness of knowledge. Books can provide a structure, but they not communicate a thought process. One of the classes was about sup vibhakti-s. The word was मित्रम् (friend) and question put to students was why मित्रेण सह is in तृतीया-विभक्तिः. Note that the question is not what is the तृतीया-विभक्तिः एक वचनम् of मित्रम्, but why मित्रेण सह  itself is in तृतीया-विभक्तिः. Why not मित्रम् सह or मित्रस्य सह? After various guesses, one of the students quizzically said "otherwise, it doesnt sound right?". Yes. That's the closest answer one can get. Grammar does not drive a language. Grammar is derived from a language and then it provides a scaffold to the language. That experience of abstractness of knowledge is the second strike.

Pretty much all the interpretations of the vaidika dharma accept that mokSha is the ultimate goal. How mokSha is defined is a different question. But to attain mokSha, sAdhana is important and for sAdhana, the tool is equally important. How much ever you try to light up holding that matchstick inversely, you are not going to succeed. For those who think that gIta, stotram-s and other Samskritam texts are a tool, the realization that the tool must be understood correctly without usage of any other monkey-spanner, is the third strike.

When we were campaigning about the event, I remarked a bit pessimistically to my fellow kArya-kartA Srini Raghavan that those who decided would have already registered and those who are undecided most likely wont. But he replied quite enthusiastically, "Im not worried about people who are not into learning Samskritam. Im looking for people who want to speak Samskritam, but who may regret that they missed an opportunity by not knowing about a way to learn it".

Indeed. In fact, I would have counted myself one among them. I'm in. Are you?.

Read, Restore and so forth

My first sight of a computer was in 1983 in a remote town in India, the deity of the city is a representation of "Conscious-Ethereal Grand Cosmic Nothingness". Our science teacher somehow got hold of somebody who had a Commodore 64. About 40 students from our class (India was that less populous 30 years ago) walked about 5 kilometers on a rainy day to that computer guy's house. We were allowed in a batch of 10 into a room dimly lit and were seated on the floor. A girl, sitting on the chair, was holding a joystick (or a mouse?) and a keyboard and making a noisy typing sound. On the small monitor some rectangles and squares of different colors were jumping around. She was playing some game. She said something about BASIC and thats all we learnt.

Almost 10 years forward. It was the onset of the Russian winter, I was walking with a senior towards the university. He was a smart guy, everybody respected him and was always an A-grader.  We were talking about programming language theories. C++ was just getting popular. He said "Hey, I know Pascal and C. And this year we are learning some AI using Prolog. I've also been learning C++...". He paused. Then suddenly said, "You know BASIC right? Can you teach me that?". I didn't know what to respond, but just said "Sure". I was a bit confused but elated to 'teach' a senior. That opportunity never came though.

Current times. Studying Ashtadhyayi's several techniques which are an illuminating parallel to programming - there is one that is intriguing. It is the word "aadi" given in a context. When Panini wants to mention a group of information, he would just use the first value of the group and suffix it with "aadi" or "aadya:". The reader is obviously either expected to know the list by-heart or refer to it. No big deal, when the average Sanskrit student is expected to know amarakosha by-heart anyway. So the first value of the list itself is used as the "head" to reference the list. This way Panini feeds by a pointer to an array of data using a very simple technique.

A pseudo code may clarify:

/* The list of verbs called as dhaatu paatha */
static Map DHAATU_PAATHA = [bhU:sattaayaam, ... ]

/* pointer to the list of the dhaatu paatha; trying to mimick naturalness - intentionally not referring via the static variable but via the head-value of the list */
char *list_of_verbs = ["bhu"]

Look at some of the sutra-s -

bhUvAdayo dhaatavaH (1.3.1) | By this statement Panini refers to about 2000+ verbal roots in Sanskritam, starting with bhU
sanaadyantaa dhaatavaH (3.1.32) | Refers to the list of derivational roots, the list starts with a verb that ends with suffix "-san"
praadayaH | Refers to the 22 prepositions that start with "pra"

Obviously this technique of "aadi" reference is pretty common in Sanskritam and other Indian literature. Tyagaraja in his siddharanjani kriti naadatanumanisham says "sadyojaataadi pancha-vaktra" referring to the five faces of Shiva starting from sadyoja. Obviously one who is not aware of the details will not know what the rest are, but aadi is just what it is - a pointer to a list of information. If Panini was the one who invented it (lets assume for sake of argument, because Panini had predecessor grammarians too and there were obviously other literature before him), it is a brilliant technique. The technique is not perfect though, because overtime somebody could come up with a modified list with the head-value being the same. But still its a great way to abstract information where the uniqueness of the head-value serves as an emphasised indicator to the contents following it.

Back to programming after the detour. Even after several years in programming, BASIC continues to fascinate me. Given all kinds of high level languages, there is one feature I think I sorely miss from BASIC. It is the "READ...DATA" statement. The READ...DATA statement allows for feeding data to the program in the shortest possible way without having to assign random values individually.

10 FOR I = 1 TO 10: READ X(I): NEXT I
20 DATA 1,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29
30 RESTORE 20

10 READ NAME$, PHONE$, PI, BASERADIX
20 DATA "James Bond", "555-1212", 3.14, 8
30 DATA "11/11/2011", "All the world's a Pre-Production."
50 READ DATE$, WS_QUOTE$

The DATA statement could be anywhere in the program and the READ statement would sequentially read-off the data, like popping off a stack. The RESTORE statement acts like just like the "aadi" of ashtadhyayi - it points to just the beginning of the data. The simplicity of the bootstrap data feed is appreciated when you do not care where the DATA is set. Several high level languages have been invented after that, but not many provide such an easy way to feed bootstrap data to the program variables. Of course there is enumerators and similar stuff, but somehow the simplicity of READ statement stands out. Just like Panini's aadi technique.

The Bidi Messenger

Pretty much everybody has a friend from their college days who was a smoker. A typical college guy, he would stylishly pull a Wills cigarette, fix between his teeth half-biting it, take out a "cheetah" match-stick, almost bringing it towards the cigarette, but slightly bending the neck to reach it, protect it from the winds with the other hand, light the cigarette, all the while making some unintelligible sentences with cigarette in half-open mouth and finally looking up the sky, let out a satisfactory smoke and a sigh, with thoughts lost in a philosophical world. He also would oblige his friends, by letting out "rings". Smoky Rings, especially let out in incremental diameters and one following another in perfectly equal time intervals, was considered the ultimate accomplishment in smoking.

The first time when I came across the text of Meghadhutam, The Cloud Messenger, it was bewildering, to say the least. The loooong shlokas in the mandakraantaa meter (17x4=68 syllables) seemed to have an unhurried pace of its own. The meaning had to be understood from English translations, which painted the idea, but not quite the subtlety. Later I started doing anvaya-s of the shlokas. anvaya-s are exactly like solving jigsaw puzzles. You already know what the final picture is (ie the translated meaning) but the challenge is in getting there: find the most important piece - the dhaatu, group similar vibhakti-s, figure out the kaaraka-s, fill-in the avyaya-s and suddenly a sense appears out of nowhere. The pleasure of anvaya is magnitudes above the pleasure of just reading the translation.

Even the harshest critics of Kalidasa (if any) agree that Meghadhutam is one of the finest and most original works of human mind. It has influenced several poets, both Samskritam and non-Samskritam. Poets have imagined a variety of messengers for whatever purposes. Venetia Asnell blogs that there are about 70 known-so-far messenger-poems in Samskritam alone. Literary gems like Hamsa sandesha, Kokila sandesha being aside, there are also poets who use this technique for ninda-stuti. One poet took it to a new level and composed "Donkey Messenger" (kazhudai-vidu-thoodu, கழுதை-விடு-தூது, in Tamil) to disgrace another poet.

In olden days, smoking was not known to be injurious to health. There was a poet with a pen name "seeni sakkarai pulavar" (funny name, because both seeni and sakkarai mean sugar in different Tamil dialects). It is known that he was born in the family of great poets in Ramanathapuram district. Being a great bhakta of Subrahmanya, he imagines a lady sending the cigarette smoke as a messenger to Subrahmanya in his புகையிலை விடு தூது ("pugaiyilai viDu thoodu", tobacco-smoke-messenger). Out of 59 verses, 53 praise the cigarette and the last 6 contains a message to Subrahmanya svaami of Pazhani (Balasubrahamanya).

கற்றுதெளிந்த கனபர பலவான்களும் உன் சுற்றுக்குள்ளாவதென்ன சூழ்ச்சியோ

kaRRuteLi~nda ganapara balavaangaLum un chuRRukkuLLaavadenna chUzhcchiyO

O Cigarette! Whats the trick that you make even the scholars slave to you?

வாடை பொடிக்கதம்பமனவெல்லம் உன்னுடைய சாடிப்பொடிக்கு சரியுண்டோ

vaaDai poDikkadambamanavellam unnuDaiya chaaDippoDikku chariyuNDO

Can the good smell of Kadamba powders match the smell of yours kept in a jar?

In the course of praising cigarettes, the poet also Indianizes the history of tobacco, giving it an interesting puranic twist. Once the gods gave a bilva leaf, tulasi leaf and tobacco leaf to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma respectively and asked them to bring it the next day. The cigarette mentioned here is not the modern filtered cigarette, but the local bidi aka suruttu, which is made with tobacco leaf. The vilva leaf was taken away by Ganga (residing on Shiva's jaTa). Tulasi leaf was taken away by the milk ocean (where Vishnu resides). Smart Brahma had given the tobacco leaf to Sarasvati who resides in his tongue. The next day the gods ask the leaves back, while Shiva and Vishnu could not return, Brahma says மற்றவர்கள் பத்திரங்கள் போயின, என்னுடையது போகயிலை ("mattravargal patthirangal poyina, ennudaiyadu pogayilai, others' leaves are lost, mine is not lost), takes it from his tongue and returns. The poet plays on the word "போகயிலை" ("pOgayilai", not lost) which later morphed into புகையிலை ("pugayilai", tobacco). With the story having strong references to purana-s and also a tight etymological derivation, anyone would hardly dispute its origin!

If only this poem had been taught in schools, the smoke rings from those college friends would have served as a more meaningful messenger!

The full text in tamil can be downloaded here.

Lost in Transliteration

Transmogrifier is a device into which a person goes thinking of becoming of something and comes out thinking being exactly that. (Invented by Lord Calvin and Sir Hobbes). Transliterator is a device, where a sound goes into it in one script and comes out the same in another script.

I never understood the spelling-bee contests. Young kids producing words out of infinitely bewildering phonetics. "trouvaille" (meaning: finding) goes one word, pronounced "truva" as many as 4 letters are silent. These spelling bees are only gonna get tougher, and in three years from now we may have the announcer keeping mum and the poor student will have to find the word, because, er.. all the letters are silent. Kudos to the effort and memory power of the students though.

The whole spelling bee concept is based on the platform of arbitrary and artificial phonetics. If there were a one-to-one correspondence between sound and script, the spelling-bee will become a drone-bee. If we rule that English be written phonetically from tomorrow, spelling assignments would disappear. What you say is what you hear is what your mind interprets. WYSIWYHIWYMI.

This reminds of artificially created problems and equally artifical solutions. A good analogy is some of the Java design patterns like Iterator (where you write elaborate classes) "disappear" in dynamic languages like Groovy. The Java design patterns have been elevated into language features of Groovy, so there is no "problem" to start with!

So how many times in life will you ever use that word again? That thought makes me nostalgic about those toefl and gre vocabularies where I crammed words to better the neighborhood guy whose veneer impressed my folks, while I stood exasperated. How many of those words am I using now? How many of those words are being used by native English speakers? And I'm told that I should use simple language while writing emails to clients. If I use the words appoggiatura or roscian, the client will simply take the business elsewhere, because I am hard to communicate with. The fact is, for effective communication you just need around 1000 words in any language. The rest are for poets and dictionary makers who just want to intimidate us ordinary folks and to float themselves in business :-)

Sanskritam students often wonder what is the best way to type in Sanskritam. There are a few great tools - Baraha, Google Transliterator etc. There are also a few english transliteration schemes available for the devanagari script. Which one to choose? I feel each of them try and have their own quirks. Lets examine some of those:

The Harvard-Kyoto is mostly used in academic circles. The most jarring usage in this scheme is that of uppercases for anunasikas (G/ङ्, J/ञ्) and z for fricative श. Try however, I could not pronounce z as श while reading. Just like the Tamil zh/ழ doesn't make any sense, but we just adapted it.

IAST is more confusing with multiple latin alphabets for the same devanagari akshara (k, K -> क, kh, Kh -> ख). Do you ever substitute one letter for another in English? Then why such karakter overdoz for transliterashuns?

ITRANS is even crazier. Doubled or uppercases (aa vs A), exponent symbol (R^i), doubled uppercases followed by lowercases (LLi), tilde before, power after, dot before, dot after - its hard to write in ITRANS unless you are already a mathematical genius. It could have also used integral and sum symbols - one could learn advanced calculus simultaneously while writing saMskR^itam.

The other side of the text is parsing into comprehensible data structures. Writing parse routines for such schemes involve quite a bit of effort. So the question is, can there be a simpler, consistent scheme, with fewer things to remember while typing?

Here is one such minimalistic transliteration scheme and it uses only 4 main rules and 3 corollaries:

Rules

1. lowercase 2. uppercase 3. possible dot after a letter 4. semi-colon for visarga; jihvamuliya; upadhmaaniya

Corollaries

1. uppercase for dIrgha
2. krama -> lowercase; lowercase+dot; uppercase; uppercase+dot
3. 1:1 mapping in the transliteration

a A e E u U r. R. l. E. I O O.

k k. g g. n
c c.j j. n.
t t. d d. N
T T. D D. N.
p p. b b. m
y r l v s s. S h
M :
a. (avasarga)

The principles behind the scheme are:

1. A devanagari letter is either ONE char or ONE char + dot.
2. The scheme is almost consistent (lowercase, lowercase+dot, uppercase, uppercase+dot, uppercase for dIrgha svara). This is why we get an orderly (n, n., N, N.)

Parsing or tokenizing such a scheme is also easy. There is only one if condition to determine an akshara - if a dot follows letter, they form one akshara, if not, that letter is the akshara.

In other words, converting a sentence into unicode is just one-line, assuming the unicodeMap[:] is defined already.

def toUnicode(s,i => return this.append(unicodeMap[s.charAt(i+1) == '.' ? s.substring(i,i+2) s.substring(i,i+1)]);

Q & A

Q. Why favor the 1:1 mapping? After all isn't it good to have options and easy to write in different ways?
A. It sure is, but do you really substitute one letter for another letter in English or Sanskritam? Can you say "sha" is close enough to "sa" and use it for "savam"? A 1:1 mapping allows no options and eventually it gets streamlined in a person's thought process.

Q. viDE.he -> isnt this hard to read than vaidehi ?
A. Yes it is, no doubt. But how did you learn to pronounce it as "vaidehi" with "d" as द while the most common pronunciation of d is ड ? It will be hard read at first, but didnt we all start with guessing what a dot, dash, tilde, apos mean on top and bottom of the letters :-). If one is already used to a scheme the mind resists a change.

Q. So whats really easy about this scheme?
A. If you are well versed with the devanagari krama, it is probably easier to apply the transliteration. Also there is only the extra character dot to remember.

Q. Whats really difficult, then?
A. Reading will be unnatural for those who are used to different scheme (eg nAraayaNa vs N.ArAyaNa). We are so much used to N being murdha nakara! But even the existing schemes were originally unnatural, so the unnaturalness just shifts to a different section.

(Note: This article is not to challenge existing schemes, but to show a minimalistic scheme ie a scheme with minimum fuss is possible from a parsing perspective. In any art form, the prevelance rules over theories).